Saturday, August 15, 2020

Lowering the River

Certainly, there is not a lot of good that comes out of a worldwide pandemic such as Covid-19. But one bright spot of it is that it has forced every aspect of life to be rethought, reimagined and re-engineered. Many of the things we thought were so necessary to the way we work and live may, in fact, be much less important. Coronavirus has made many of us innovate, improve, become more agile. It has triggered a rapid evolution of our systems and processes, much of which will become the new normal. This highlights a major advantage that Lean organizations possess. The Lean infrastructure is designed for continuous improvement, quick response and problem solving up and down the organization. 


An example of this that I heard about on the radio recently, was the changes that college entrance committees were being required to make in their selection process of new freshman students when the last semester of high school was so disrupted and taking SATs (or other admissions tests) has been impossible for health and safety reasons. In some high schools, they went to a Pass/Fail grading system versus the usual four point system. How do these college boards deal with this? How important are college entrance tests; are they really that informative? Many universities have instituted (re-instituted) the entrance essay as a metric for admission. Will these essays become a permanent requirement for admission post Covid-19?




One of the axioms in the Lean environment is to "lower the level of water in the river." When the water level is high, systems and processes seem to sail by smoothly because rocks are covered and we go over them; flow occurs effortlessly. However, this often leads to complacency; a false sense of well being. Lean organizations will routinely introduce small changes to their Value Stream that cause a little bit of chaos. It "lowers the water" just enough to show where the rocks (waste, defects, muda) are. These rocks are problems, never before illuminated, that need to be solved in order to avoid potential, future pitfalls; to survive and to be better tomorrow than we are today. Covid-19 has "lowered the river" exposing dangerous "rocks" among many of our systems, especially healthcare. Lean teaches that systems should be in place that make problems (or potential problems) quickly identifiable and corrected quickly at the root cause level.


For example, if one of your Value Streams (e.g. annual wellness exams) has been functioning very well with five staff members involved, then try changing it to only use four (and reallocate that fifth person to new work that can, perhaps, drive growth for the practice. What problems does removing a person introduce; what rocks pop up? How would your practice deal with that change? How might you have to evolve and improve? 


Or, if your inventory is set at a certain level with a certain reorder point, what changes would be needed to avoid rocks if you decided that these levels be decreased by ten percent, saving capital and carrying costs? But be mindful that lowering the water too quickly can make us crash the boat. You might be able to start by putting 10% of inventory in a separate “emergency use only” location -- and when you can improve your processes to the point of truly not needing it, then use up that 10% without replacing it. 


Or, what would your practice need to change in order to start seeing appointments every twenty minutes rather than every thirty minutes?  How can we do so in a way where nobody feels rushed and so that care and service doesn’t suffer, not to mention the quality of worklife?


By occasionally, but routinely, "lowering the level of the river", Lean organizations start seeing new "rocks" that stimulate innovation, creativity, problem solving techniques, staff engagement and place them even farther ahead of their competition; more capable of sailing in rough times.


It will be very interesting to see what life will be like (better? or worse?) one, two or five years from now because of what Covid-19 has invoked. Though, hopefully, in the future it will not take a worldwide pandemic to teach us the necessity of "lowering the river" and continuous improvement. 


How might this be experimented with in your practice?


Thanks for reading.